The Story Of Three Chickens -TCS, Wipro & Infosys

Subir Roy writes the story of TCS, Wipro & Infosys – He relates to these as three chickens which all laid eggs - One was shy, one was honest and one was a chicken with hype. All laid an egg each, ordinary looking, whose product quality was identical, say 100. The first made a noise of two decibels, so very few heard of it and came to see it. But with those who did come, it scored 98 plus. The second was the honest chicken. Its product quality was 100, it made a noise about being 100. Everybody came expecting 100, got 100. The end result was even or neutral, neither positive nor negative. The third chicken, whose egg was of quality 100, made a noise that it was 400, everybody came expecting 400, but got 100, that is minus 300. If you have not guessed it yet, the first chicken is Tata Consultancy Services, the second is Wipro, and the third is Infosys - the three leading lights of the Indian software industry. The three represent a fine conundrum. For the record, I disagree with the rankings or the comparison made in such narrow sense.

My Take: The article while recognizing the different marketing strategies these employ makes the claim that they offer near-identical services of near-identical quality and there is little to distinguish them in the way they meet customer requirements ( This is a myth – increasingly the offerings and depth or lack of it are showing up and look at the vertical revenue distribution/service offering revenue amongst these companies ). This is an excellent article – while there may be some misrepresentation of facts , the article is highly insightful – never have I seen something published like this with so much of detail – while being an industry insider with so many contacts and interactions – we get to know all these and perhaps a lot more but for someone not interacting with these companies – a highly recommended read about the major players that were mostly instrumental in changing the rules of the game.